Amina's Reviews > Jane Eyre

This classic beauty reminds you that everyone deserves a love that burns, aches, tears at your soul, opens your heart, and brings pure joy. Even if that love comes with consequences…

Jane Eyre is a kindred spirit, full of passion, intelligence, independence, wit, charm, and overall a magnificent human, bringing meaning to the phrase 'character development'.

Jane grows up in unfortunate circumstances. Upon the death of her father, she is raised by her vile aunt, who not only disdains Jane’s existence but is abusive. Locking her up in rooms, ignoring, and taunting her. She is an uncouth human, jealous at her core.

You think I have no feelings, and that I can do without one bit of love or kindness; but I cannot live so: and you have no pity.

When Jane moves to an orphanage, she lives in dreary circumstances and does not discover better conditions until her last few years. She befriends a dear girl named Helen, a light in her darkness. Helen is the one person who treats and cares for Jane, but soon, she, too, dies.

Arriving at Thornfield, she takes the role of governess to Mr. Rochester's guardian, Adele. The uncanny bond that forms between Mr. Rochester and Jane happens much later in a peculiar, gorgeous, slow, endearing, passionate, epic way. Jane finally feels she is safe:

I grieve to leave Thornfield...I have not been trampled on....petrified. I have talked face to face, with what I reverence with what I delight in. I have known you Mr. Rochester...

As the book progresses, we see small moments, hidden gestures, and stolen glances, all ebbing toward love.

I love you as my own flesh. You-poor and obscure, and small and plain as you are...

A dark secret threatens to destroy the pure, tranquil love and bond between Jane and Mr. Rochester.

Jane's perfection is her ability not to let it break her. She picks her independent soul and moves forward, searching for a morsel of semblance and untrusting happiness.

Jane Eyre is a beautifully eloquent story of a woman chasing after her own respect and independence. It may be the most feminist book to date. Jane doesn't relent, and she doesn't break. She keeps growing, building, and evolving.

This isn't the typical 19th-century novel about a histrionic woman who is dramatized and entitled to give in to the whims of plainness or a man. It is the story of a woman who steps one foot after another in mud, snow, and the trenches of her torture to keep living beyond her pain.

Do you think that I am a machine? That I can bear it?
Do you think because I'm poor, plain, obscure, and little
that I have no heart? That I'm without soul?
I have as much heart as you and as much soul.
And if God had given me as much beauty and wealth,
I would make it as hard for you to leave me as it is now for me to leave you

When Mr. Rochester asks her who will care for her, she says, "I will care for myself."

I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will

I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself

Here is my truth: I have read many, many books. I've liked books, I've adored books, but nothing comes close to the feelings I have towards Jane Eyre.

Character development, arcs, writing, drama, mystery, and romance—Bronte covers every single base, leaving me spellbound.

The book was atmospheric, romantic, and mysterious at once. I savored every minute, reading only when the mood was perfect—preferably on a gloomy, rainy day. In its dark, romantic moments, it closely resembled Thornfield.

I love you, Jane Eyre. It’s hard to process you're only a character and not perfectly real.

Ahhh, this quote can make me weep--when does someone desire to know you from your depth? Rarely....

You are altogether a human being, Jane? You are certain of that?’
'I conscientiously believe so, Mr. Rochester.’

Mr. Rochester is a brooding, soul-sacrificing lover who has been defining books and period dramas for decades. He has the ultimate passion, mind-bending desperation, for Jane; like religion, he revels in her existence. I was reading with gritting teeth as he teased and tested Jane to conjure her innermost thoughts—he felt them, too, yet the passion sat between them like an unwelcome guest.

It is as if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly and inextricably knotted to a similar string situated in the corresponding quarter of your little frame. And if that boisterous channel, and two hundred miles or so of land come broad between us, I am afraid that cord of communion will be snapt; and then I've a nervous notion I should take to bleeding inwardly

The beauty of Jane Eyre, the novel: an uncanny ability to bring the reader inside Jane's very thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. With wretched beginnings, we carry her burdens and revel in her slightest joys. It's like no other book, worthy of all its accolades.

5+ shining, brilliant stars.

(Also, if you haven’t watched the latest Jane Eyre [2011], don’t walk; run to stream it! So well done, gorgeous!)